Neighbors reeling after female bicyclist shot and killed in Berkeley

Yellow police tape marks the spot where a woman was shot and killed while riding her bicycle on Tuesday night. Photo: Frances Dinkelspiel

The only signs Wednesday morning that a woman was gunned down Tuesday night as she rode her bicycle near Longfellow Middle School was a piece of yellow caution tape flapping in the wind, and three television news vans.

Otherwise it seemed like an average, if rainy, morning. Trucks delivered food to the school cafeteria, parents dropped off students, and stragglers rushed through the rain to make their early classes.

A woman who lives near the corner of Derby and Sacramento streets said she had heard what sounded like a shot Tuesday night but did not know a murder had occurred until she bundled her young son off to school in the morning.

“We heard the gunshot,” said the woman, who only wanted to be identified by her first name, Amanda. “It was really close. It was just one. We didn’t hear any sirens.”